Daily Times

Karachi has the potential to build two waste-to-energy plants at Jam Chakro and Gond Pass landfill sites as these plants will safely consume 2,000 tonnes of waste out of 12,000 tonnes garbage being generated in the city on a daily basis.

Waste collection and disposal system was nowhere seen in the port city as municipal governance of city was heading towards a virtual breakdown owing to sheer neglect by successive governments.

Karachi is lacking basic infrastructure and resources to dispose of more than 14,500 tonnes municipal, industrial and hospitals waste being generated on a daily basis.

Findings of a study on waste-to-energy option for Karachi revealed that owing to lack of infrastructure only up to 60 to 70 percent waste generated in city was being lifted for proper disposal.

Per person daily waste generation in Karachi is ranging between 0.37kgto 0.95 kg, which was quite manageable given the international standards of waste management system.

Speakers at 15th Annual Environment Conference-2018 referring to several findings of different surveys were of the view that it was found that only temporary garbage transfer stations did exist in jurisdictions of district municipal corporations East, South, Central in Karachi and that too had been established without conducting any environmental and social impact assessment studies to ascertain negative effects of those waste disposal facilities.

Waste-to-energy projects could easily be installed both at Jam Chakro and Gond Pass landfill sites where at each one of the sites 1,000 tonnes of useful waste could easily be separated from rest of garbage to consume it for the projects.

Caretaker Sindh Information and Environment Minister Jameel Yusuf said that people should not sit back and show no activism in case the state didn’t come to their rescue to provide them basic civic services like sanitation, waste management, working sewerage and drainage systems.

Yusuf said that though present caretaker government set-up had been installed for a very limited time period and with a limited mandate, it had been doing its best to provide all the required assistance to relevant agencies related to cause of environmental protection.

Mehfooz Qazi, director Alternative Energy at Sindh Energy Department, said that Sindh government would launch a solar energy project in a year.

He said that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) had already issued upfront tariff to every province for up to 50MW waste-to-energy plant as this incentive would serve well to attract private sector to invest in waste management system of Karachi.

He said that waste-to-energy project would hopefully be built in Karachi in one year’s time as after Sindh Solid Waste Management Board would become functional as lot of hurdles towards this cause had been removed.

Rawalpindi Waste Management Company Managing Director Dr Rizwan Ali Sherdil said that his company was established in 2014 and so far it had achieved its basic task to do 100 percent collection of waste generated in Rawalpindi.

Ahmad Shabbar, running a non-governmental initiative ‘GarbageCan’ in Karachi, said that waste management operation in a city like Karachi could easily be made a viable business proposition for every stakeholder through adoption of modern recycling techniques.

He said that public-private partnership was the most viable option to do waste management work in Karachi.

Shah Jahan Mirza, MD of Private Power and Infrastructure Board, said that with new power plants established at Port Qasim in Karachi and in Sahiwal, coal-based power generation still stood at eight percent of all electricity generated in the country.

He said that this percentage was way much less than international criteria as in US 40 percent electricity was generated through coal-based power plants while this ratio stood at 45 percent the world over.

Sindh Environment and Climate Change Department Additional Chief Secretary Mukhtar Hussain Soomro said that the government had been doing its best to implement the provincial environmental protection act as it had started a campaign to launch a crackdown on manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers related to business of substandard polythene bags.

He said that owing to efforts of Sindh government, large shopping and retail centres in Karachi had done away with the use of polythene bags.

Dr Kaiser Waheed, president of SITE Super Highway Association of Industries, said government in Pakistan should not allow setting up an industrial area until and unless all basic utility and civic services were available there.

Published in Daily Times, July 19^th 2018.